European Application No. 0 448 957, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,380, describes an apparatus for the separation of healds having open end loops. In this apparatus, the carrier rails are fastened laterally to supporting arms, the connection between the carrier rails and supporting arms being made in the region of the open part of the end loops, so that the displacement of the healds on the carrier rails is not impeded by the supporting arms. Since the carrier rails have to be fixed as near as possible to the heald carrier in order to allow a fault-free transfer of the separated healds onto the heald carrier, it is clear that this known apparatus is not suitable for the separation of healds having closed end loops. This is because the supporting arms fixing the carrier rails cannot pass through the closed end loops surrounding the carrier rails on all sides.
An apparatus for separating healds having closed end loops is known from the drawing-in system in USTER EMU (USTER being a registered trademark of Zellweger Uster AG). In this apparatus, the carrier rails are clamped at one end only and reach with their flee end as far as a transfer station, at which the transfer onto the heald carder rails of the heald flames takes place. Special healds, which have an embossing allowing engagement of a separating knife, are used here. The separated healds are then pushed over the tree ends of the carrier rails into the transfer station by a transport member.
This apparatus uses carrier rails of very small length and is therefore unsuitable for automatic drawing-in machines. This is because an empty carrier rail has to be exchanged for a full one at very short intervals, and this always means an undesirable stopping of the drawing-in machine. Moreover, the carrier rails clamped only on one side constitute a considerable potential fault source, particularly at relatively high separating frequencies, such as are demanded nowadays from an automatic drawing-in machine.